Safety strategies
still to the handover and operational stages. A significant amount of our work at Arup is now spent in occupied buildings trying to help people decipher what design and construction standards they have actually been given. The major themes from our work regarding
handover relate to: • the prevalent use of passive fire protection either outside its certified limitations, or simply installed incorrectly
• •
active fire safety systems which have never been integrated and cannot produce the required cause and effects
reliance on opinions and the selective briefing of building control – rather than a validated solution by test or detailed analysis
All this means the responsible person is not given a building that they can fully understand or manage properly.
Regulation 38
Yet it is not clear why this is happening, because all of this is actually regulated. Regulation 38 of the Building Regulations has a requirement for the person carrying out the work to provide fire safety information about the design and construction of the building to the responsible person who will operate that building. BS 9999, for example, has a very good layout and content guidance
for a fire safety manual to support this handover process. In general, however, Regulation 38 and the guidance of BS 9999 seem to be wholly ignored at handover. So how do we create a system that consistently produces safe and compliant buildings? Where do we start? What positive steps can we take as a collective? How do we demonstrate as an industry that we are serious about something different happening from now on? And how do we restore the public’s confidence that the UK construction industry takes people’s life safety in buildings seriously?
A way forward
The quality of the construction of fire protection measures is in the spotlight across the globe. How can we improve the quality of what is being built and have confidence concerning safety moving forward? There are many reviews being undertaken
around the world trying to come up with answers to this question. The intention of this article is not to question or assess the merits and the findings of these reviews, as they are being debated across industry at the moment. New approaches and change in the industry will take time to crystallise. It is our intention to suggest two ways of improving the quality of fire safety provisions being built, thereby bringing increased confidence back to industry.
FOCUS
www.frmjournal.com OCTOBER 2018
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